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SOME SOCIAL THEORIES OE 
THE REVOLUTION, OUR PRES- 
ENT DAY RETROGRESSIONS, 
.-.•.•.■ THE STEPS BACK \ \ \ \ 



j^S^S^®, 




AN ADDRESS B\ 

THEODORE OILMAN, Esq. 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY 

OF THE 

ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND 
PATRIOTS OF AMERICA 



JANUARY 31. 1-05 




Glass 

Book 



PRESENTED BY 



SOME SOCIAL THEORIES OF 
THE REVOLUTION, OUR PRES- 
ENT DAY RETROGRESSIONS, 
.-.•.•.• THE STEPS BACK \ \ \ \ 




AN ADDRESS BY 

THEODORE GILMAN, Esq. 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE NEW YORK SOCIETY 

OF THE 

ORDER OF THE FOUNDERS AND 
PATRIOTS OF AMERICA 



JANUARY 31, 1905 



Gift 

The Society 

Mp'35 



Lr? 






NOTE 

The following address was delivered by Theodore Gilman, 
of the New York Society of the Order of the Founders and 
Patriots of America, at a meeting of said Society, held at the 
Hotel Manhattan, New York City, Tuesday Evening, January 
51, 1905. Its publication was directed by the Society. 



THE NEW YORK SOCIETY 

OF THE 

Order of the Founders and Patriots of America 



OFFICERS 

FOR THE YEAR ENDING APRIL lg, I905 

Governor 
Hon. ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT 

Deputy Governor 
THEODORE FITCH 

Chaplain 
Rev. GEORGE BURLEY SPALDING, D.D. 

Secretary 
WILLIAM ALLEN MARBLE 

Treasurer 
GEORGE CLINTON BATCHELLER 

State Attorney 
HENRY WICKES GOODRICH 

Registrar 
TEUNIS DIMON HUNTTING 

Genealogist 
CLARENCE ETTIENNE LEONARD 

Historian 
HENRY LINCOLN MORRIS 

Councillors 
Hon. WILLIAM WINTON GOODRICH 
THEODORE GILMAN 

HOWARD SUMNER ROBBINS 

JAMES LE BARON WILLARD 

Col. HENRY WOODWARD SACKETT 

MILO MERRICK BELDING, Jr. 

COLGATE HOYT 



SOME SOCIAL THEORIES OF THE REVOLUTION 

OUR PRESENT DAY RETROGRESSIONS 

THE STEPS BACK 

BY 
THEODORE GILMAN 



A traveler, especially a home comer, visiting the old towns of 
New England, may well be impressed and refreshed by the gen- 
erous plan on which those towns were laid out by the pioneer 
settlers. Time has brought to a luxuriant maturity the elms 
which line the streets. The broad and parklike street, which 
forms the central detail in the plan, is at once dignified, restful 
and beautiful. It lends itself to adornment or business. 
The town can never outgrow that feature of its plan. If it be- 
comes a city, the spacious roadway is its breathing place. If a 
resort of fashion and recreation, the plain old street becomes an 
elegant avenue, which blooms gracefully with flowers and smiles 
broadly with lawns. 

What kind of men were they who thus planned for the future 
in this large-hearted, brainy way ? We can tell what they were 
as we think their thoughts after them. The men who laid out 
the towns of Litchfield, Stockbridge, Williamstown, North- 
hampton, Exeter and a host of others had a conception of what 
a town site should be which belonged to themselves, as distinct- 
ively as a style of literature, art or architecture belongs to the 
men who created their separate eras. 

The town site was not the result of esthetic taste or of a 
knowledge of landscape gardnening, though it included these. 
It was rather the expression of theories of government and soci- 
ety. The unit was the town and the formative principle which 
governed its development and its physical aspect was the social 
compact. That which gave shape to the village was a theory of 
equality as broad as the land and of representative government 



which surrounded every hamlet with the dignity of a royal 
court. The familiarity of the founders with constitutional law, 
and the consciousness that they were shaping their government, 
their land, their social customs, their very streets, for a brilliant 
future, the magnitude and glory of which dazzled their imagina- 
tions, made them to feel that their every act was great and 
freighted with heavy responsibilities for the future. 

With this serious mind they laid out their towns, and we of 
the present day who walk through those quiet and shaded streets 
are compelled to acknowledge that the men who planned those 
walks were great. 

But there is another side to this picture. In many of these 
towns it is to be noticed that the original plans have not been 
maintained. Perhaps encroachments on the parklike street 
have been permitted, or local contests over locations of public 
and private buildings have arisen. It may be that those living 
at one end of the town have become jealous of those at the other, 
and the old church, which was placed in a commanding position, 
has been a source of contention. A rival has perhaps been 
placed in a location more convenient to a part of the towns- 
people, or, if the old church has burned, a new one has been 
erected as a compromise on a site which destroys the unity of 
the founders' plan. The visitor mourns over these changes and 
laments that, while the outline of the plan remains, the custody 
of these priceless heirlooms has fallen into degenerate hands. 

The town is a type of the nation, and the retrograde steps 
which may be noticed in the town may perhaps have happened in 
the affairs of the nation. The present generation may well be 
called upon to revive the spirit which moved the founders of town 
and nation, by marking the departures from their principles which 
are evident to the student of the past and the investigator of the 
present, and by endeavoring to restore to its pristine beauty 
that grand conception of which the plan of the town is the type. 
If inroads have been made in the ideas which, like a broad thor- 
oughfare, map off the plan of the political and social systems 
which our great forefathers drew, it is for us, the American 
citizens of to-day, whether native or of foreign birth, to become 
so imbued with their spirit that we can see the departures which 
have been made from their fundamental principles of govern- 
ment and make restorations to conform to their original design. 



Where the early settlers got their design of constitutional 
and representative government is a more difficult question to 
answer than where they did not get it. They did not get 
it from the aristocracy of England, or from the writings of 
Hobbes, the philosophic apostle of royalty. We can read in 
the history of the colonies the first appearance and the subse- 
quent development of their design. They first carried it into 
effect when the House of Burgesses met in Virginia on the 
30th of July, 1619, at which time representative government 
was first established on this continent. 1 Their design was 
again formulated in the combination made in the cabin of 
the Mayflower, on the nth of November, 1620, before the 
Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. 2 It again took shape in the pro- 
test by the minister, elder and people of Watertown in 1632 
against a tax levied by the Governor and assistants on all the 
plantations of Massachusetts, in which the colonists delivered 
their opinion that " it was not safe to pay money after that sort, 
for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage." 3 
It again was expressed when in the spring of 1681 Captain Will- 
iam Dyre, who held the positions of Mayor of the Citv of New 
York and Collector of Customs by appointment of the Duke 
of York, was arrested at his handsome residence, on the south- 
east corner of Broadway and what is now Liberty street, charged 
with imposing on the citizens of New York "unlawful customs 
and impositions on goods and merchandise." At his trial Dyre 
entered the plea that, as he had a royal commission, he could not be 
tried. The verdict of the jury, however, was that the arbitrary 
levy of taxes under the sole authority of the Duke was illegal. 
Dyre was sent to London under arrest, but there was released 
without punishment, evidently because the home government 
was in sympathy with his acts.* The Duke of York was at 
length compelled to yield to the wishes of the colonists and 
Dongan was sent out as Governor, empowered to summon the 



1. English Colonies in America, Doyle, Vol. i, page 138. 

Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 14, page 266. 

2. Bradford's History of Plimcuth Plantation. Printed by order of the General Ccurt, 
i8gg, page nc. 

3. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, Vol. 12, page 387. 

4. Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, collated by John Romeyn 
Broadhead, 1853. Vol. 3, pages 314-321. 



8 

freeholders of New York to establish a representative govern- 
ment. 1 

The same determination to resist taxation without representa- 
tion showed itself in the Province of New Hampshire in the year 
1683, when Thomas Thurton, Provost Marshal of the Province 
under appointment by Lieutenant-Governor Cranfield, attempted 
to collect a levy under authority of the Governor. 8 He was 
told by John Foulsham, Constable of the Town of Exeter, that 
if he, Thurton, came to levy any execution at his house he should 
meet with a hot spit and scalding water. And the wife of Hon. 
John Gilman, who w r as appointed Councillor of the Province of 
New Hampshire by Charles the Second, 3 said she had provided 
a kettle of scalding water if he (Thurton) came to her house to 
demand rates, and the wife of Moses Gilman did say that she also 
had provided a kettle of boiling water for him, which had been 
on the fire for two days. Also, John Cotton, minister of Exeter, 
did come with a club in his hand, and they asked the Provost 
Marshal and his deputy what they did wear at their sides, 
laughing at them for having swords and being afraid to use 
them. The Marshal and his deputy said that the Governor had 
his commission from the King and he had his commission from 
the Governor to be Provost Marshal. They replied that his 
commission signified nothing, for they knew the law of England 
as well as any of the rogues, meaning the Governor and his 
Council. Afterwards they fell upon him and his deputy, and 
did beat him, and put him on their horse and tied his legs under 
the horse's belly and carried him out of the Province of New 
Hampshire into the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. 4 These 
sturdy colonists thereafter made their complaints to the King 
against the Governor, chief among which complaints was the 
accusation that the colony had few laws but those made by the 
Governor and his Council, when his commission directed that 
the General Assembly, elected by the people, should make laws. 

By these and similar occurrences in the various colonies, in de- 
fiance of the autocratic acts of the Governors, the principle of 

1. Documents relative to the Colonial History of New York, collated by John Romeyn 
Broadhead, 1853. Vol. 3, pages 331-334. 

Spencer's History of the United States, Vol. 1, page 92. 

2. Thomas Thurton's visit to Exeter occurred 29th of December, 1683. 
Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. 1, page 551. 

3. Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. 1, pages 374 and 434. 

4. Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. 1, pages 551 to 554. 



representative government became the broad avenue around 
which all our early commonwealths grew up and on which they 
were established. Here was manifested the spirit of Magna Charta, 
the spirit of Anglo-Saxon love of freedom, the spirit of the theo- 
cratic doctrines of the Old Testament; here was the spirit of the 
Roman and Greek republics, the teachings of Moses and perhaps 
of Hamurabi, his predecessor, and of countless unknown law- 
givers before and after, through whom came down to the present 
age the true principles of human liberty which were to have at 
last a glorious opportunity to flourish and bear fruit in a con- 
genial soil. 

Bancroft remarks: "Popular assemblies burst everywhere into 
life with a consciousness of their importance and an immediate 
capacity for efficient legislation." 1 Before 1700 practically all 
the colonies had free legislative assemblies. 2 It was early 
urged that " there was more likelihood that such as were ac- 
quainted with the clime and the accidents thereof might on 
better grounds prescribe their advantages " than " such as sit at 
home" in England. 3 

Business considerations had their weight in the formation of 
the scheme of government, for settlers were invited into the dif- 
ferent colonies by a promise of legislative freedom and a share 
in making the laws. We have only to remember how corpora- 
tions now flock into a State whose laws are favorable to recog- 
nize what a great inducement it might have been to immigrants 
in those early days to locate where the laws and taxes were made 
and administered by the people themselves. At the Revolution 
this self-government was regarded as an invaluable right pur- 
chased by toil, treasure and blood. 4 

The resistance of the minister, elder and people of Watertown 
to unjust taxation in 1632, to which reference has been made, 
presaged the defeat of the aristocratic Winthrop at the next 
election for Governor of Massachusetts. This resistance to taxa- 
tion without representation was the beginning of the strife be- 
tween the colonies and the King. Bodies of laws which were 
enacted by the colonies, which were equitable, wise, progressive 
and just, and, as we look back at them, were in the spirit of 

1. Bancroft's History of the United States, 17th Edition. Vol. 1, page 250. 

2. Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, pages 18 to 21, note. 

3. Frothinghanvs Rise of the Republic of the United States, page 21. 

4. Frothingham"s Rise of the Republic of the United States, page 27. 



IO 

modern progress and enlightenment, were disallowed and re- 
turned from England without the royal approbation. These 
conflicts and rebuffs created an irrepressible contest between an 
avaricious and profligate aristocracy and a liberty-loving people. 
The colonists tried to comfort themselves with the belief that 
" against the rapacity of foreign pretended claimants of their 
soil they could find protection in the known laws of the realm 
and the undoubted right of Englishmen and the favor of a gra- 
cious prince." 1 Their loyalty to the King was true and strong and 
it held out with marvelous tenacity against rebuffs, injustice 
and cruelty, until at last the cords which bound them to their 
King were cut by the sabre strokes that shed the first American 
blood at Lexington. 

In colonial law there was no higher title than that of Freeman, 
and no higher privilege than to vote. It was so high a privilege 
that it was withheld from the convicts with whom the colonies 
swarmed, and given only to those whose respectability was 
vouched for by church membership. 3 Voting, therefore, was a 
religious act and duty. 

Primogeniture, that stronghold of class distinction in England, 
did not long survive the free air of the colonies. In Massachu- 
setts it was provided by law as early as 1641 that estates should 
be divided equally among children, except that the eldest should 
have a double share. 3 Restriction to navigation and travel were 
alien to a vast, new country. "Let there be no Scheldts," said 
Timothy Pickering, when they were preparing the Ordinance 
of 1787. 

So, with a representative government, with a uniform citizen- 
ship, with an equal division of property in families, and with no 
hindrance to travel on land or sea, after the great struggle of the 
War of the Revolution, the new republic was organized and 
established and sent on its mission down the ages. 

These general principles, which preserved the rights of the 
individual, were reflected in all laws, social customs and business 
enterprises. The town, its site, plan, arrangement and order, 
were the nation in miniature. It was an ideal condition which 

1. Provincial Papers of New Hampshire, Vol. i, page 410. Address of the General Court 
to the King, Charles the Second, dated March 29, 1680. 

2. Johns Hopkins University Studies on Representation and Suffrage, Vol. 12, Chap. 4, 
page 416. 

3. Am. and Eng. Enc. of Law, 2d Ed., Vol. 27, page 294. 



existed at the close of the Revolution, and it was no wonder that 
some of the baser sort, who were rude and uncultivated and 
hardened by the cruelties of war, should have misapprehended 
their rights and by an exhibition of force should have given the 
enemies of the republic occasion to blaspheme against its insti- 
tutions. The Congress of the United States was obliged to 
leave Philadelphia where it was sitting and remove to Trenton, 
to escape the anger of a mob of the unruly creditors of the na- 
tion. No wonder Alexander Hamilton's confidence in a govern- 
ment by the people was shaken, for on that occasion he urged 
Congress " to think on eternity, for he believed that in an hour 
not an individual of their body would be left alive." 1 The legis- 
lature of New Hampshire was, at the same time, only protected 
by force from an armed attack of advocates of an issue of fiat 
paper money. 3 At the same time a still more serious outbreak, 
known as Shay's Rebellion, occurred in Massachusetts, when the 
malcontents clamored for State issues of paper money and en- 
deavored to interfere with and control directly the machinery of 
the State government and Courts. It was a carnival of an at- 
tempt to govern by persons and to overthrow and disregard the 
rights of property. 

These disorders contributed much, if not chiefly, to the adop- 
tion of the Federal Constitution. They were prototypes of other 
disorders which have threatened the life of the Republic from 
that time to the present. Shay's Rebellion was a petty affair 
compared with the Rebellion of i860, but they belong to the 
same class. In each case representative institutions were 
brought to the test. The question was, can they continue to 
exist when men are oppressed with poverty, when they are in- 
flamed with anger, when any considerable number wish to throw 
off an allegiance which they have found irksome and no longer 
love. There has been but one question presented to the people 
since the organization of this government, but though the same, 
it has been presented in many different forms. It always re- 
solves itself into this, can the government survive disaster, pov- 
erty, internal dissensions, temptation to do wrong, and in these 
last days a new danger has arisen, can democratic institutions 
stand the increase in wealth and luxury. 

1, Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War, by Alex. Garden, 1822, page 431. 

2. History of Exeter, N. H., by Charles H. Bell, page g 7 . 



12 

Ever since presidential campaigns began, the country has been 
told that the Constitution was in danger, and that our liberties 
were threatened. In a sense that has been true, and perhaps 
some of our liberty has been taken from us, and more might 
have been. There are many who now smart from a feeling of 
injustice from national and local legislation, who are angry at 
the tariff and are envious of those who they think have been 
made rich by robbery. Public questions have often been decided 
by might, not by right, arbitrarily and not according to justice 
and equity. Such results are inseparable from human affairs 
where mixed motives govern and the sense of right is often 
swayed by emotion and personal interest. Popular favor is 
fickle and the hero of to-day may be inglorious to-morrow. 

The question has been whether popular government can survive 
the crisis, not whether the principle of such government is right. 
Therefore the object of a patriot should be to provide against 
the crisis, to anticipate the dangers which might overtake the 
country, to cut out the decaying spots from the body politic. 
Thus the plan of the town and of the nation would be preserved. 
The object is not to change the plan, but to carry out the orig- 
inal design. 

We must, therefore, seek to know what will defeat the original 
design, or, in other words, what is subversive of popular gov- 
ernment. The answer must be, whatever will take away from 
the freeman his vote, or will, tend to nullify his vote by giving 
to others not legally authorized the power to command its use, 
or will tend to reduce the voter from his position of equality 
and exalt property powers and qualifications at his expense. 

These are the dangers to which popular government may be 
and is exposed. Reduced to their last analysis, the one is the 
danger from the political organization called the machine and 
the other is from the financial combination called the trust. The 
machine takes from the voter the control of his vote and uses 
it according to its judgment. Its twin ally is the trust, which, 
in copartnership with the machine, wields a vast money power 
to overwhelm the individual voter, circumvent his wishes and 
overthrow his independence. 

That the machine is not to be found in the original plan of 
the town, and is no part of the representative government estab- 
lished by the founders and patriots of America, is evident on 



i3 

the slightest inspection of the ancient plans and documents. 
The colonists antagonized their Governors when they promul- 
gated laws without the consent of their General Assemblies, 
which were duly elected by the people and were truly represent- 
ative. The consent of the governed, as evidenced by the votes 
of freemen, and the power to originate legislation and levy taxes, 
were held by them as inalienable rights. 

After representative government has been established in our 
country for two hundred and eighty-six years, after our fore- 
fathers won the fight for self-government in the battles of the 
Revolution, and after many political struggles since then, to 
confirm and perpetuate a government of, by and for the people, 
it is strange that we should find a condition nowadays existing 
by which we have a form of popular government and are denied 
its reality. But the word machine is too vague a term for us to 
use without explanation and definition before we attack it and 
suggest remedies. It is a modern word applied to describe a 
condition which already exists. There is no thought in the parts 
of a machine. The fire burns, the steam is generated, the pis- 
ton moves and the power is developed at the will of the one who 
controls the machine. He does all the thinking and the parts of 
the machine are subservient to him. A political machine has 
like characteristics. It necessarily involves the idea of a boss, 
at whose word of command the machinery of the party starts and 
stops. I have the greatest respect for a competent engineer. I see 
him with his oil can with its long spout deftly dropping a little oil 
first on one crank and then on another. I see him increasing the 
draught and piling on the coal and with his hand on the throttle 
and his eye on the road ahead bringing his train through on 
schedule time. There is nothing lighthearted or gay about him. 
When he brings his train to a stop he looks at you with a solemn 
face, as one who knows that great interests have been under his 
care. The political boss is much the same kind of a man, and 
usually does the work committed to him in an equally satisfac- 
tory manner. He would not hold his position for one moment 
if not commissioned to do so by his party. The boss is a neces- 
sary part of the machine and it is not the boss but the machine 
which is arraigned before us as a fungus growth on the tree of 
liberty. 



14 

The political machine is a development which takes its origin 
in the system of delegating the duties of a large body to special 
persons or committees. That system is a good one and indis- 
pensable for the prompt discharge of the business before any 
organized gathering of men. The first duty of a political or- 
ganization is the appointment of committees and it is an easy 
step to the appointment of a committee to boss the whole or- 
ganization. Such a committee may be a necessity for the super- 
vision of the general interests of a party, but when it assumes 
dictatorial powers and reduces the other members of a party or 
organization to puppets to obey its commands, and sends up 
orders to Albany or Washington to push one measure through 
and to sidetrack another, whether they appear to legislators 
beneficial or otherwise, then its actions become harmful. A 
general committee might, within limits, be most desirable, while 
a machine might be most disastrous to the welfare of the 
country. 

The political machine works in the dark with no public ac- 
countability. It is therefore necessarily exposed to the tempta- 
tion to make trades and deals. A still greater danger lies in the 
temptation to make issues for the party, not because those issues 
are demanded for the good of the country, but because they 
form the best basis on which to conduct a political campaign. 
Politics in the hands of the machine becomes a game. Econ- 
omic questions have only an academic interest unless they are 
advocated by the machine. The machine surrounds our legis- 
lative assemblies as his courtiers surrounded King Charles the 
Second, or as the bureaucracy surround the Czar. 

But the chief danger from the machine lies in the still further 
extension of its power to control the appointment of commit- 
tees. Committees are said to be the hands, eyes, feet and ears 
of legislative bodies. How is it at Washington now ? Is it not 
known that the appointment of committees is controlled by a 
few men and that the general membership of the Congress has 
very little to say about it ? These few are no doubt very 
excellent men, and their one thought is to bring the subservient 
train through on schedule time. They do their work so well it 
would be graceless to complain, if they did not practically 
nullify the representative character of Congressmen and bring 
Congress under the suspicion of compromising deals. A repre- 



*5 

sentative who arrives at Washington for the first time, and who 
is ambitious to do work on committees, finds that it is not fitness 
but pull with the machine which will get him the desired place. 
He is demeaned by being required to submit his recommend- 
ations and letters. The machine settles the matter by selecting 
committeemen not primarily for worth or capacity, but for 
serviceability to the party organization. Thus the committee- 
man, when appointed, finds his allegiance must be largely 
transferred from his constituents, where it rightly belongs, to the 
machine to whom he owes his appointment. The considerations 
which influenced the machine in giving the appointment are a 
hidden mystery and find their explanation either in legislation 
favorable to certain interests or in legislation which was stifled 
on its way to the statute book. 

Where can we find authority for this method for the control 
of legislation? It was not in the plan of the founders and 
patriots. We read in the first section of article one of the 
Constitution of the United States, "All legislative powers herein 
granted shall be vested in a congress of the United States, which 
shall consist of " what ? a Speaker and a machine ? No : " of a 
Senate and House of Representatives." Nowhere in the Con- 
stitution do we read that the Speaker of the House is second 
only in authority and power to the President of the United 
States. Nor do we read that any one Senator shall have power 
to stop legislation on any subject. There has been a slow 
evolution by which at last the appointment of committees and 
the control of legislation has been taken away from Congress- 
men and placed in the hands of the machine, and thus the whole 
theory of government devised by our forefathers has been 
defeated and subverted. Such changes come on us slowly and 
unawares and the true situation is only revealed to us when we 
wake up to find that we have broken away from our moorings 
and are drifting on a sea full of dangers. 

There is then a loud call for reform and for an indispensable 
change in our legislative methods to bring them back to the 
pure standards of the founders and patriots. This required 
change is to restore to Congress the power given to it by the 
Constitution and taken away from it by the machine and to 
place again in the hands of Congressmen themselves the ap- 
pointment of their own committees. This would restore to the 



i6 

office of Representative its former dignity and take Congress out 
of the valley of humiliation in which it has traveled too long. 

This change would be no experiment. English, French and 
German precedents can be cited in its favor. It is impossible to 
think of a Presidential Convention organized on any other 
plan, short of autocracy. It is only necessary to refer to the 
example of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, 
which adopted this system a few years ago at the original sug- 
gestion of Col. James M. Rice, of Peoria, Illinois. The 
Presbyterian Church in the United States of America had its 
birth in the same city and the same year as the Constitution of 
the United States and its church government is of the same rep- 
resentative character. 

Following the principle of the plan which governs our Presi- 
dential Conventions, as well as some of the English, French and 
German legislative assemblies, Congress could be districted and 
the right to appoint their proportion of committeemen given to 
the representatives of each district, the dominant party holding 
its majority in each committee as now. Committees would 
thereby become representative of their true constituents, the 
voters who elected them. All underhanded combinations and 
influences are thereby prevented, and the office of Representative 
restored to its former dignity. Issues before the country would 
then be raised to the highest plane, the welfare of the entire 
nation and the dominant and pernicious reign of the machine 
would be brought to an end. 

A large part of the danger from the trust would vanish with 
its twin conspirator, the machine. If committees, the hands, 
feet, eyes and ears of legislative bodies, were truly representative 
of the country instead of the machine, it would be impossible 
that bargains could be made. But the trust has its economic 
side as well as its political. The value of a trust to its promoters 
is in proportion to its nearness to a monopoly. To Anglo- 
Saxon thought a monopoly is odious. In an environment of 
the Latin race it is not so. The good that may come from a 
monopoly overbalances in the Latin mind the evil that it may 
occasion. 

Caste never had a substantial foothold on this continent. As 
has been said, the founders and patriots early discarded primo- 
geniture and established representative government under which 



i7 

all freemen possessed equal rights. All the tendency of legisla- 
tion in this country has been to give every man a fair and equal 
chance. But the trust intervenes to prevent this result, and it 
uses the power given by the State, that is, of incorporation, to 
accomplish its ends. The trust gives to capital the power to 
overthrow weaker rivals and dictate to whole communities the 
terms of their existence. The development of whole areas of 
the country is made subject to the will of absentee proprietors. 
It has been said that the danger to our liberties is from mili- 
tarism, and the examples of Greece and Rome have been 
appealed to by the high authority of Dr. J. G. Schurman, Presi- 
dent of Cornell University, to maintain the assertion. But did 
not the Heroic Age of Rome exist under the Republic ? Were 
not then the Samnite wars carried on which paved the way to 
the future greatness of Rome? Did not then the Roman Senate 
possess its greatest power and majesty? Was it not during the 
Punic wars that Rome's naval power reached its preponderating 
influence? Was it not during the Macedonian wars that Rome 
became the arbitress of nations ? All these military movements 
took place under the Republic. It was only as the military 
power gained for Rome her proud position that wealth corrupted 
the habits of the people, and their stern virtue and loftiness of 
purpose was exchanged for every species of vice and profligacy 
that a corrupt imagination could suggest. 1 

Wo to the land to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay. 

Rome's greatness was attained under a warlike Republic, and 
lost under the dominance of an effete, moneyed aristocracy. If 
Dr. Schurman will take down his Pliny, he will see that it was 
his opinion that it was the trusts of those days that destroyed the 
Republic. Pliny was a near observer, and he wrote these three 
words which give his explanation of the decline and fall of the 
Roman Empire, "latifundia perdidere Italiam," the broad estates, 
the vast combinations of capital, sent Italy to perdition. "The 
economic condition of ancient Italy," writes the translator of 
Blanqui's Political Economy, in a note on page 51, "presents a 
most remarkable fact which has only been brought into full relief, 
by recent writers, notably by Dureau de la Malle, in his Economie 
Politique des Romains. It is the depopulation of Italy caused 

1. Oxford Chronological Tables of History, 1838, Tables VI., VII. and VIII. 



by the disappearance of small estates and the concentration of 
the lands in the hands of a small number of families who finally 
possessed all the peninsula. Before the Punic wars, Italy was 
covered with a close population of hard-working people who 
themselves cultivated their little capital in lands, and from 
whom those Roman armies were recruited which conquered the 
west. In the time of the Gracchi this vigorous population had 
sensibly diminished and the end to which, above all, the reform- 
ers of the democratic party tended, was to re-establish it by a 
division of the lands of the State. But this end was not 
attained. On the debris of small proprietorships were formed 
immense domains (latifundia) ; cultivation on a small scale 
was superseded by exploitation on a large scale by means of 
slaves; the fields of grain were converted into pasturage; the 
same lands which had supported 100 to 150 families of freemen 
were cultivated by about 50 slaves, for whom there existed no 
marriage and consequently no posterity. Under these circum- 
stances the depopulation was necessarily rapid and it was easy 
to comprehend the causes. Pliny said, 'latifundia perdidere 
Italiam,' " which I may translate in modern language, " the trusts 
killed Italy." 

The steps in the decline of Rome are very plain. Before the 
large aggregation of capital was combined in the hands of a 
few Italy was covered with moderate estates, over many of 
which presided a Roman citizen. In this indomitable, intelli- 
gent and patriotic population was the strength of the nation. 
From it Rome could call a Cincinnatus from his plow to lead 
their armies to victory. A change came when capital bought 
up these small properties and merged them into great estates 
which were controlled from Rome, for then throughout the 
length and breadth of the land the Roman citizen was replaced 
by a tenant or a slave, and the strength of Italy departed. The 
decline and fall of the Roman Empire then began. 

So it will be a lamentable event in the economic history of 
the United States when our modern latifundia, the trusts, shall 
replace the intelligent and patriotic owners of moderate finan- 
cial and industrial concerns with their agents or their clerks. 
The vigorous class of American citizens from which we draw 
our great men, the leaders in politics, the able class of moderate 
bankers, the industrious merchants and traders, would then 



19 

have deteriorated or vanished. No longer then could the nation 
call a man from his country store or bank to take control of a 
state or the management of the federal finances, for the race of 
our Cincinnati would then be extinct. 

Our founders and patriots delighted in the story of Cincinnatus, 
for they saw in it a true picture of the state of society at the 
Revolution. Adam Smith wrote of them in 1776: " The persons 
who now govern the resolutions of what they call their conti- 
nental congress feel in themselves at this moment a degree of 
importance which perhaps the greatest subjects of Europe scarce 
feel. From shopkeepers, tradesmen and attorneys they are be- 
come statesmen and legislators, and are employed in contriving 
a new form of government for an extensive empire, which they 
flatter themselves will become, and which indeed seems very 
likely to become, one of the greatest that ever was in the world." 1 
They saw the analogy between themselves, the embattled farm- 
ers and Cincinnatus. They established the order of the Cincin- 
nati and gave the name to a future great city in commemoration 
of their admiration of his example. In so doing they also set 
the stamp of their approval upon a state of society where trusts 
do not exist. 

It may be questioned whether it is in the power of the govern- 
ment to prevent the formation of trusts. That is a problem to 
be solved in the future by the efforts of Congress and State leg- 
islatures. It is evident that trusts are corporations or combina- 
tions of corporations which receive their lives as individuals from 
State or National Governments. The question then is, have in- 
dividuals the right to demand from the public incorporation 
when the corporate powers conferred will be used against the 
interest of the State ? This is an untenable hypothesis. No in- 
dividuals have such rights when their use is against public pol- 
icy. If it is agreed, therefore, that trusts are inimical to the 
welfare of the State, then it is evident that the State should not 
allow their formation. This principle is recognized in those 
State laws which forbid the union of parallel competing railroad 
lines. The fact that some railroad companies have circumvented 
the law and have combined parallel and competing lines has 
never prevented a State from putting such a law on its statute 
books. 

1. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Fifth Edition of J. R. McCulloch, Edinburgh, i36i, 
page 281. 



"L 



20 

A great step in advance towards the solution of these questions 
was taken in the recent report of Commissioner of Corporations 
James R. Garfield, in which he proposed the incorporation under 
federal law of all corporations doing an interstate business. 
There is but one step more to accomplish the prevention of the 
formation of trusts, and that is the placing in the proposed fed- 
eral corporation law a provision modeled after the railroad law 
and made to apply to corporations doing a competitive business. 
It is as easy to follow a line of business as it is to follow aline of 
railroad. The argument against the combination of competing 
lines should apply as fully in one case as in the other. 

Thus would we strike down by these simple, effective and 
practicable means the double-headed hydra which threatens the 
life and liberties of the nation. The machine is an evil which is 
present in local, municipal, State and national politics. The 
trust is an evil which must be arrested and overthrown or it will 
hold the nation in its grasp. The one thrives and fattens with 
the other. They were unknown evils to our forefathers, and if 
we, the people of the United States, would preserve the pure 
form of government and society which they conceived and 
handed down to us, we must prove ourselves their worthy suc- 
cessors by carrying into effect these indispensable measures of 
legislative reform and thus bring back our government to the 
lofty and grand ideals of the founders and patriots of America 



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